


Road Trip

by GreenJacks



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Outsider Perspective, Roadtrip, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 08:00:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10382133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenJacks/pseuds/GreenJacks
Summary: They're a long way away from home, and one of them has a broken ankle.The barman has no idea why those two men were calling each other friends, because they clearly weren't.





	

 

 

 

It’s Thursday afternoon, and business is slow. Jimmy Jones and Monty are surprised to see someone new in town. They don’t have many, just some, a few, passers that need gas or others going along the road and stopping by for something deep fried and a glass of beer. Because the road is long, and it’ll be another night or two in the car before they can reach any city from here.

So they can smell a fresh one when they smell one, and it’s not hard to follow it up. This one had the scent of a pear tree you could smell from a mile away. He smells like wine and cinder, has a grin on his face that makes Monty uncomfortable. He has a broken ankle, Jones can see from the bare limp and the bleeding bruise on his naked pale feet.

“Need somethin’ for that?” Jones offered.

There is something about the way his eyes _click_ when they give you attention. They snap up like someone pushed a button. It’s too green for Jimmy’s liking. He had a fear of snakes with green eyes that he contracted from when he was a little kid. Bites nasty.

“No, no, _my sweet man_ , so polite. But no.” The stranger hums. “I need a beer.”  _Guinness._

The man sits down by the counter, crossing his legs. Has a swagger like one of them old classic movie figures. Monty pulls a mug from the counter, fills it up, and plops it down in front of him. Jimmy tries not to look at the blood dripping down his chair. _Just wiped the floor._ He thinks, sparing a glance at the green haired unfamiliar, who, frankly was a bit queer in his conservative mind.

“Road accident?” Jones asks.

“Mmm.” He murmurs back, slinking his eyes down and pulling up his jeans. “We had a fight, my good buddy and I.”

Jimmy raised a brow. The man grabs the mug off the table. He gulps half of it down his throat before putting it back down the counter with a thick clunk.

“Threw me out of his car.”

The barman blinks. Well, not many a day he sees this situation actually happen on the road. The man furrows his brows as if contemplating a very important life decision.

“I do wonder how he expects me to get home now.” He muses as if this was a normal, daily occurrence. Like the sun shining up, or like the stars popping about in the evening sky. Jimmy feels a little trippy talking to him. Maybe it was the rhythm he speaks with.

“You need help? It’s a long road ahead.”

He shook his head, a smile permanent on his face. The man took the last of his sips of beer before putting it down with a giggle.

“Oh, he’ll come back. I’m sure he will.”

“You’d know?”

“I planted a bomb in his trunk.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Mrs. Hemmingway is obsessed with the classic TV shows. She still keeps a Braun box in her living room. The folks like to move it around inside the pub in the lazy evenings, a few motel residents come down for dinner when the sun is about to fall down dead.

Jimmy likes it when the few that hang around town sticks themselves down the sofa in the corner to watch the old Broadway musicals. The pool tables are nearby, and everyone just has this quiet moment to themselves while sipping on his beer. It’s a big portion of what contributes to his enduring business in a desolate roadside pub.

He grows accustomed to the old and famous that blink up on Hemmingway’s screen, and he knows a handsome man when he sees one. He sees him, and he sees someone different. Someone who, underneath all the rough beard and dusty jacket, lived in a different world.

The evening allows more numbers inside his pub, and more eyes turned when the man walked in. He has a big fist, curling inside his palm. Tall, muscular, and dark haired, just like the rich and powerful Jimmy Jones saw on the morning news.

And something instinctively tells him, a gut feeling if you will. _That this was him._

This was the good buddy, who just had his car trunks blown up. Jimmy can tell, his jacket looks burnt. And before his safety sense could make his eyes turn back towards the green haired stranger - who was solving crossword puzzles on the counter - the dark haired man stomps up to them and takes an uninvited seat next to him.

There is a sense of dread. Or maybe it was anticipation, Jones can’t tell. There is an air like a storm between the two men, who just refuse to meet each other’s eyes when it was blatantly clear that they wanted to smash their eyes together and leer at the other to death. The barman sees the redder lips twitching with an edge, his smile getting sharper.

He wonders if they were friends. _Or something else._

 

“You’re late. Brucie darling.”

The taller man twitched an eye. He orders a scotch. Has a posh taste in his alcohol, liked it expensive and rare.

“Apologies.” Brucie darling answered with a blade in his voice. “My car blew up.”

They sit there in silence for exactly twelve seconds, the time it took for Monty to fill a cup and pass it down the counter. The man plunks the mug down after a big gulp, just like his eccentric friend. They share strange mannerisms, small little ones that only Jimmy can internally notice after thirty years of perfecting his art of bar-manning.

“Just a little longer, and I might’ve decided I’ll _walk_ my way back to Gotham, ya know.”

“Why didn’t you? It would’ve saved me the trouble of drowning you later.”

“So immature, lil’ Bruce. What did I do this time to make you go _boo hoo_? Was it the cake? Oh, tell me it was _the cake_. That would be so _you_.”

“ _Me_? Immature? Listen to yourself, you irresponsible little pri-”

“Fellas.” Jimmy intervenes at this point because the man has his fingers around the other’s neck. This to him seemed like a very intimate thing to do. Whatever the gesture was, Jimmy Jones wanted a quiet, peaceful Thursday night, preferably with no broken chairs. So he gives them a warning stare, fingers squeaking at the glass his was polishing.

The man calms down. He uncurls his fingers from his friend’s neck. Who was smiling despite now sporting two angry streaks of red around his throat.

“Yes, down boy. Thatta’ good boy.” The green haired man chimes, cheerfully clashing his pointy teeth at his companion. He growled back, in reply.

Those red lips never knew when to quit smiling. It goes on, mumbling away a small voiced comment even after the other man tears away to down his beverage. “It wasn’t even my fault, for once.”

“I don’t believe you,” Bruce mutters back.

His paler companion has enough feelings apparently, to look amused. But not enough to look offended, and definitely lacking enough of it to look hurt. He laughs. His laughter sounds like burning sandalwood.

“That’s what you want to believe sweetheart. Don’t worry though. I’m quite used to your self-delusions. Pal, be a darling and get me a cup of whatever he’s drinking, would ya?” _He’s payin'._ The man adds, jabbing a thumb backward at the bearded man.

“You’re despicable.”

He means it in two ways. The paler man knows this of course. Jimmy can tell by the way he grins, eyes all sly and stretched, an apple slithering atop his tongue. Adam never falls for it though. He simply turns his head around and vents his frustrations out on the rest of his scotch.

“Tell me what else is new.”

Brucie darling doesn’t answer. He just has this eternally stiff face on that was starting to concern Jimmy Jones. The man might be a victim of immense stress, and the main supplier seemed too oblivious to it, or he just didn’t care about it more than the cup of scotch in his hand. But the barman says nothing, no, that was out of his business area. He just takes the cash, straight and fresh from the man’s wallet.

The wallet is branded, with an Italian initial Jones saw in his grandfather’s closet. This indeed _was_ an expensive man.

It made him question his strange choice of companionship. Or maybe it wasn’t his choice. He certainly doesn’t seem happy about it, but he was tolerating it.

But then, the man was taking an exceptionally long time to linger his stare on the pale, swollen ankle flashing under the man’s jeans. And it makes Jimmy Jones question them on the whole, again.

“Get up. We’re leaving at dawn. I’ve rented a room for you.”

“For _me_? Or for _us_?”

“You’re sleeping on the couch.”

“Haven’t finished my drink.”

Monty scuffles behind Jimmy Jones, a broomstick between his palms. They watch in silence, out of the corner of their eyes, at the two men who grumpily, but surely, was reaching out to each other to stagger off.

The broader man allows his ‘ _friend_ ’ to wrap a lean arm around his shoulders, and he supports their weight and broken appendages all the way out their pub.

 

If you asked Jimmy Jones, they both looked crazy as dang fucks.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Jimmy called in for a rental car the day before, and it arrived like the honest business it was, on time and ready to go before eight in the morning.

Wayne, as the man introduced himself on the signing paper, had enough credentials to prove he would get the car back to where it should go back once he reached home. They were from Gotham, too far away from home, in Jimmy’s opinion. Wayne thanks him for the help around town. He replies, _don’t mention it_ because that was his routine of normality.

And just like that, they were ready to go. The two strangest people Jimmy Jones had ever encountered in his life, stranded in his business that refused to die in the middle of nowhere, stuck in a town that nothing happened.

“I’m taking us home.”

Wayne mutters, nudging his head towards the front seat. The pale man makes his way across the road and beside the car, pushing his five dollar sunglasses back to the bridge of his nose. He waves cheerfully at Jimmy, mouthing a goodbye. The barman can see something acutely red around the hem of his collar bones, and it explains a lot of things that suddenly decided to make sense.

Like this morning when he came down the stairs, stinking of collagen that wasn’t his. His cinder scent all burned up and consumed with Wayne’s synthetics.

Like the way he limps, a bit more callously. Like the subtle grabbing and jostling that happens to stop him from falling down or tripping over. Like the way, Bruce Wayne looks at him.

A look that you give to someone who you know what kind of face they make in bed. The look that you give to someone who you bit, hard, and crushing enough to bleed, just to see them say I love you shitless.

You can’t control things like that. No sir, you can’t.

And Jimmy Jones sees the two men go.

On the desolate road, trapped inside a car with each other for another seventy-two-hour ride across the country back to where they came from.

 

 

 


End file.
